It's Survival of the Fittest in New 'Animal Kingdom' Clip

There are several big films opening this weekend -- and we've already asked you which of the three you intend to see in our Monday Night Poll -- but if you're in NYC or LA and want a break from slackers, action heroes and Julia Roberts, you might want to catch Animal Kingdom.

David Michôd's Aussie crime drama opens in limited release on Friday. The filmmaker's debut feature, Animal Kingdom won a World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival and has wowed critics wherever it has played. Now, a wider audience is set to experience Michôd's tale of a young man (first timer James Frecheville) who's taken in by his grandmother (Jacki Weaver). It's not all cookies and milk, though -- Grandma is basically the overseer of the family's criminal operations. The film also features performances from Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, and Ben Mendelsohn -- and is loosely based on the 1988 Walsh St. police shootings in Melbourne.

The guys over at JoBlo.com were lucky enough to get an exclusive clip of Animal Kingdom -- one introduced by director David Michôd -- and it should certainly whet your appetite for this film. It's not an action scene, but there's a definite undercurrent of tension running through the whole thing -- the kind of electricity all the really great crime films seem to possess. Making Of has also posted an in-depth conversation with the director which you can check out here after the jump. Given that the clips look so promising, do you think Animal Kingdom has what it takes to become a sleeper hit?